


Off Kilter

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [147]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Codependency, Gen, Magic, Pietro Has Issues, Possessive Behavior, So Many Goddamn Issues, Trauma, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Vision, keeping his sister locked away. Vision, naive and innocent, but led easily enough to think her a threat, if not to him, then to everyone else. He’s not wrong, but-“The only person,” Pietro says, and his voice is half a snarl. “Allowed to hold my sister prisoner, or hurt her, orkill her,isme.”





	Off Kilter

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Prompt: Off Balance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915883) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts). 



> This is a sequel to [_Off Balance_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915883) and is set during Civil War. Reading that fic will help this one to make sense. To give a basic rundown, however: Wanda dies in AOU instead of Pietro, and wipes Pietro's memory of her to ensure he doesn't try to commit suicide. Pietro senses something is wrong and so tries to find out what happened, eventually discovering their mother's old magic books. He learns magic, and uses that to resurrect Wanda. On doing so, he regains his memories and has to deal with Wanda as he once knew her, and all their codependency, and Wanda has he thinks of her now - the person who took her from him, who violated his mind, and whom he can no longer trust, as well as having built up relationships with the other Avengers in her absence. 
> 
> Like I said, reading the other fic will help a lot to understand where this fic starts.
> 
> This fic is set during CACW, to double check the timelines for things I used [This](http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War) very handy site. 
> 
> I listened to various songs while writing this but didn't really hit my stride until I listened to [_Sweet Dreams_ by Aviators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_lxIiJ8ck4), a FNAF song. Mostly, though, its an Aviators song, and honestly I swear there's an Aviators song for just about every Maximoff twins AU one can think of.
> 
> Many thanks to [Niamh](http://grannyweatherwaxofficial.tumblr.com/)/[SecondStarOnTheLeft](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft) for helping me figure out how to end this, and to [Rin](http://jehanprouvaiire.tumblr.com/)/[wandasmaximoffs](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wandasmaximoffs) for encouraging me.
> 
> There.... may be another sequel in the works for this. Maybe. Sorry. There's still stuff to work through, ok! And pain! So much PAIN!

Things don’t change. To live under the strain of Wanda’s existence is something he still doesn’t know entirely how to deal with. To see her - the fear-relief - is a constant strain, and even the farm is only so much relief knowing Clint had invited Wanda to stalk its halls.

He goes on runs, takes every training exercise he can, and stays out of her way.

 

* * *

 

Her hands are trembling when she steps off the Quinjet in Lagos. Nerves, she thinks, just nerves. This is the first mission _sans_ training wheels, she’s trained for this, she can _do this._

But she’s here, and it feels like she’s alone, even with the Captain and Sam and Natasha around her.

 

* * *

 

Wanda sends her mind spinning out while they wait in the cafe. The Captain has tried to convince her to be careful with her mind, to avoid prying into people’s thoughts, into their heads, into their innermost selves.

She would almost laugh at his earnestness, at his soft insistence, but she knows he means well. He does not know, not like Pietro does, that she has learned from her two greatest mistakes.

(Fear into their minds, making Ultron, making their mistakes. Stripping herself from Pietro’s mind, erasing who he was and all they ever were.)

(There is no amends she can ever hope to make for these.)

Her mind spins out, her mind watches. She’s learned to make it invisible, spread it so thinly as to be hidden. She could use magic too, cast spells for proximity and threats, but if she uses magic too much it makes her scars ache, reminds her of the blinding moment of her death, her greatest error.

She needs no more reminder of that than every day where Pietro cannot make himself look at her.

Then the attack comes, and her thoughts fly free into battle.

 

* * *

 

Pietro arrives on the scene as soon as Wanda is gone, making a portal as soon as the feed from Sam’s goggles shows Wanda leaning into Natasha’s side and heading for the Quinjet, eyes red with guilt and grief. He steps through a ring of blue and sparking silver, and sprints towards the site.

Even as he hates Wanda, fears her, dreads her very presence, he knows beyond a shadow of doubt that her guilt and grief are real. Even as he fears her, even as he knows he is barely functional in her presence, part of him wishes he could have been here - with his speed, he could have got the Wakandans out.

“This was a clusterfuck,” says Sam.

No one dares to chide for language.

 

* * *

 

Thaddeus Ross unnerves Pietro. There is something off about him. Maybe it is because he still feels a failure for being unable to overcome his fear and work around Wanda. Maybe it is because Ross is a rich American - an ex soldier who seems the kind to look gladly down on the inhabitants of the country he made war in. Maybe it is because of these _Accords_ being brought before them that he feels unnerved.

Maybe it is Wanda, sitting near the front of the room across from Steve and beside Vision, her mind vast and oppressive blood-red in the room.

 

* * *

 

“Sign this,” says Ross, tapping the document he’d passed Wanda. “You have a team member who came back from the dead, and two ten-ton nukes who’ve vanished. The people of the world need to know that you aren’t threats. That you’re going to help contain threats. That you’re going to answer to an authority beyond yourselves.”

 _Beyond themselves_. Pietro wants to laugh. When has any authority ever been something worthwhile to answer to?

 

* * *

 

Wanda feels off-kilter, off-balance, like something is disrupted and wrong. The Captain’s mind is muddied with grief, Stark’s mind is… there is some regret buried in there, and she is not sure if it is for not warning the Captain of the Accords, or for all the myriad other things he blames himself for.

Natasha seems uneasy, Sam and Rhodes and Vision are pondering and thinking, sideways thoughts slotting into place, expecting some kind of confrontation. Tony has thrown his lot in with the Accords, the Captain pitched his tent across the field from them.

Even without a battle to fight, this will still come to blows.

 

* * *

 

“I want everyone to see you as I do,” says Vision. His voice is gentle, his stance is careful. Everything about him is kindness or naivete, an innocence she long ago lost. It’s soothing to be around him, around his awkward, earnest attempts to make her feel better.

“Vision,” she says softly. “No one can. You and I… no one in the world thinks quite as we each do.”

He bows his head, looks at the glass of water in his hands. It’s odd, to look at his hands holding something. His flesh has give, she knows that, remembers the movement of muscle beneath her hand as she shook his, but against the glass… his skin does not move quite as human skin does. It’s just different enough to be unnerving.

She wonders if this is similar to what people see when they look at her.

 

* * *

 

Bucky is innocent. The Captain is sure of that, as sure as stone and every certainty he has built his righteousness on. His focus, his purity of purpose in protecting his friend reminds Pietro of Wanda, of times on the streets when someone got the better of him… but never of her. Reminds him of a time when there was no one they trusted more than each other, when they would have killed for each other.

Now, they no longer have that. Wanda stays far afield from him, gives him the space he needs, and he takes it gladly, edging around the corners of rooms, edging out of the buildings when once they would have been so close in each other’s space they were practically overlapping. Now, Pietro knows he has only the inverse to fall back on - once, they would have killed for each other. Now, after what Wanda did, taking his death and her life from him? Theirs lives and deaths belong only to him.

 

* * *

 

“There’s more to this,” the Captain says. “It’s not just framing Bucky to lure him out of hiding, whoever did this, they wanted intel.”

“A job,” Bucky Barnes says, voice raspy but soft. “From years ago. The other Winter Soldiers.”

Pietro and Sam glance, from Barnes to the Captain. “More?” asks Sam.

“It’s true,” he says. “We need to get to Siberia, and Tony won’t let us - he has to stop us. We have to try to convince him and if we can’t-”

Pietro nods. Sam speaks. “We gotta fight our way out.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro goes back to America. Sam and Bucky and Steve will make moves to get themselves out - get to an airport and hide in the myriad nooks and crannies there. But Pietro goes to America. With his speed, he can cross borders like no one else, with the Accords signed, they gladly trust him. With his speed, he can let Clint know to pick up Sam’s recruit and still have time to get Wanda.

To get Wanda, despite everything, even with the panicked fear it sets loose until the blue is shuddering around his edges in dread.

 

* * *

 

“Vision,” Wanda says, and there is scarlet curling at her fingertips, unasked for. “Vision, are you trying to keep me from leaving?”

He looks half sad, half ashamed. “Mr Stark thought it best-”

“If the witch doesn’t curse people,” Wanda nods, holds her chin high.

“You wouldn’t-”

Wanda laughs, and it feels like a death rattle. “Wouldn’t I?” she asks. “I did my own _brother.”_

And Pietro smashes through the window.

 

* * *

 

Vision, keeping his sister locked away. Vision, naive and innocent, but led easily enough to think her a threat, if not to him, then to everyone else. He’s not wrong, but-

“The only person,” Pietro says, and his voice is half a snarl. “Allowed to hold my sister prisoner, or hurt her, or _kill her_ , is _me.”_

He tries, very hard, not to notice the way all the tension in Wanda’s shoulders suddenly drops.

 

* * *

 

Pietro is trembling when he takes her in his arms. She remembers back, her first memory of gasping fresh air, gravedirt still fresh-turned around her, the coffin still at her back. She remembers how he’d trembled then.

All the same, despite his promises to kill her, the possessive threat of his rescue, she tucks her face to his neck, and tries not to cry at the betrayal of Vision, whom she’d thought she could trust.

 _The only person,_ Pietro had said, half a snarl, half wild, face a rictus of anger and refusal, _allowed to hold my sister prisoner, or hurt her, or_ kill her _is_ me.

Wanda cannot remember how long it has been since Pietro claimed her as his sister, and not a stranger.

 

* * *

 

Clint gives them the talk in the flight over. Pietro doesn’t listen - he doesn’t need to, he was the one who told Clint all of this in the first place. Clint sorts their way through, all Natasha’s skills and on this particular side, and crams them all into a minivan at the other end and drives them, fast as anything, to Leipzig airport.

Scott - Sam’s find - raises a hand once Clint has explained everything and they’re thundering along the _autobahn_ as fast as allowed. “Is this…. What you guys deal with every day?”

Clint raises an eyebrow, Wanda coughs, Pietro stifles a snort.

“Not every day,” Clint says.

“Maybe once a week,” Pietro adds.

 

* * *

 

The airport is… cold. It’s sunny, but there’s a sharp breeze in the car park as soon as they step out of the van. Wanda slides the door open, steps out, and wraps her arms around herself.

She failed her brother, betrayed him. She failed the team, betrayed people’s trust. She failed _Vision,_ accepting escape, instead of considering remaining. She’s not entirely sure this is the right choice, until she casts her scarlet out around them, carefully skirts the edge of her brother’s blue-blossoming mind, and sees the ruin that is Bucky Barnes.

“This is Scott,” says Clint, pointing a thumb at their travelling companion. “Sam’s find.”

Pietro jerks his head back towards her. “Wanda Maximoff. My sister who wiped herself from my mind.”

She sees Barnes’ flinch at that information.

 

* * *

 

Wanda coils her scarlet up into herself. She finds the burning sorrow she feels that the only reason Pietro fights at her side is because he hates her and yet still, for all of it, some part of them each still belongs only to them. She finds the burning anger she feels, knowing that an innocent man would be killed for a crime never committed, or that was forced from him unwilling. She finds all the burning _grief_ she feels, knowing the life and freedom taken from Bucky Barnes by men who long ago made her mistake but did not see it as a mistake, and chose, again and again, to destroy another’s mind as much as they thought they needed to.

She finds all her anger and sorrow and grief, all mingled kinds, and pulls it through her ribs as though combing out wool, coils it around her arms like serpents, finds security and certainty in the knowledge that, if any of the others decide to hurt her they will butt up against Pietro’s purposeful, violent, _rightful_ claim on her life.

Betrayal and possession. Her anger flares. Her eyes glow.

“We’ll buy you the time,” Wanda says to the Captain. “However much you need.”

 

* * *

 

The battle is…

It is foreseen, and yet hoped against. Not hours ago, Pietro had stood alongside these others, signed the Accords alongside them, looked to Tony Stark, who’d helped him find his sister despite all the harm they’d done him, and all the harm having Wanda back has done and yet _now-_

“Roadrunner,” he says. “Come on, you don’t have to-”

“Yes I do,” he says. “You tried to imprison my sister.”

“You _hate_ her,” he says, wheedling. “I know you hate her. You wanted me to pay for what I did, why not-”

“I would side with you, Tony,” Pietro says, and its gritted out between his teeth, this admission to the man who helped him tear back the layer of lies Wanda had used to hide herself from him. “I would side with you, but _you tried to imprison my sister.”_

 

* * *

 

_Time’s up._

Wanda sees the moment Tony decides he’s had enough, that he thinks he doesn’t have to listen to Steve, the moment he decides this is all just a dance of excuses.

Wanda twists her hand, casts her spell, and flies.

 

* * *

 

_Fearless and frightful, fearless and frightful-_

Pietro has always sensed Wanda’s mind, even though, now, he fears it’s very presence. Now, with her gliding above them, without Iron Man’s armour, or Rhodey’s guns, or Vision’s vibranium, and absolutely at their altitude, Pietro hears the mantra of her mind.

 

* * *

 

_Fearless and frightful, fearless and frightful, fearless and frightful and fly like an angel._

She can see the battle. She flicks her fingers, casts another spell. Far away, Vision halts as though yanked back by a lead.

 _I wonder,_ she thinks, _how you like being imprisoned._

She wishes she had that headband Stark had been working on, supposed to help enhance and channel her powers more powerfully, if only to hold her hair out of the way in the winds. She spreads scarlet thin, and forces that to tuck it back.

Far below, her brother runs a gauntlet.

 

* * *

 

Strike _here_ , and _here,_ and _here._ Pietro twists and turns, vaults and leaps and ducks beneath the kick Natasha aims at his silver path. He knows, if he gets the momentum, he could shatter the vibranium laced into T’Challa’s armour, that makes up Vision’s body, but T’Challa is going after Barnes, and Vision is stuck, hovering in the air and held by Wanda’s spell.

He, on the other hand, is stuck on the ground, running interference for every strike he can.

 

* * *

 

T’Challa is focussed on Barnes, Natasha on Clint, Tony and Rhodes are staring down Steve and struggling with Sam respectively.

Pietro doesn’t expect the spider boy to catch his legs until he’s on the ground.

 

* * *

 

Wanda surveys what she can see, tries to get scarlet between Rhodes and Sam, tries to send slivers of shields between the _them_ and the _other._

Then, she sees Pietro go down, right in the path of aimless bullets, a collapsing plane.

 

* * *

 

Pietro can’t get the stuff on his legs off and without his legs he’s useless and he hates this, hates this, for all he has left is purpose. He can’t move but for a shuffle and the plane above him is tilting and creaking, falling and-

A scarlet shield rises up, Wanda falls, a scarlet fist aimed at the spider flies straight and true.

 _“My_ brother,” Wanda snarls. “I’ve already hurt him. None of you are allowed to.”

 

* * *

 

She offers him a hand up, sends a scarlet spell to slice apart the thread around his ankles. Her focus on the imprisoning spell gone, Vision drops in the sky, flies low towards the Captain while Stark spirals in the air as Scott does something to his suit.

“Spellwork,” he says. “We can’t make them listen but-”

Portals take energy, take purpose, take preparation. Under Wanda’s vast and scarlet shield, he has time, in the speeding recesses of his mind, to summon up the magic for one great spell.

 

* * *

 

Barnes falls through a portal, just beyond the claws of T’Challa. Steve slips through another, just missing a tasing blast from Natasha.

Far away, the other end of the field, Pietro sees the blink of blue as both men stumble out at the base of the Quinjet.

 

* * *

 

There is a split second of time before all hell breaks loose. Far away, the blinks of blue fade to nothing, up close, there’s the momentary look of shock on everyone’s faces, everyone’s body language.

“We should have thought of that before,” Wanda says, a scathing criticism of herself. Pietro knows - can sense it of her mind just beyond the brink of his - that she does not blame _him_. Magic, after all, is what she is known for. Beyond the bounds of her shield, the others resume their fevered fight.

“We were busy,” he says. “And you knew of the magic before I did, and you had just been betrayed.”

“We should have-” She cuts herself off. He knows why. It’s been a long time since they can think of themselves, in the present, as a unit. “Go,” she says. “You should go with them, I can protect the others-”

Something impacts Wanda’s shield, sharp and violent, but not aimed at them. They look up to see Vision, his beam grazing off the edge of the shield, trying to penetrate it without doing them harm.

Pietro reaches out, takes her hand in his clammy one. “If we go,” he says. “We go together. I meant what I said. For what you did to me, tearing yourself from my mind like that, the only one allowed to do you any harm is _me._ ”

He knows she understands. Barnes was kept in one cell, designed for superpowers. Presumably there are more. Wanda’s eyes are scarlet as embers, red as a demon’s. He does not flinch in her gaze.

Slowly - what seems to be so very slowly - Wanda nods, and raises a fist of blood red power.

“If we go,” she says. “We go together.”

And they fall through a portal into the Quinjet.

 

* * *

 

_“What the-”_

Barnes is at the controls so it’s the Captain who turns and sees them. Them, and the fading vortex of red that carried them there.

“Shit,” Steve says, half a relieved sigh. “I thought- Thank God it’s you. Take a seat.”

Barnes doesn’t look back, but he says, barely audibly, “Report.”

“Clint, Sam and Scott were still fighting,” Pietro says. “We were under a shield Wanda put up to keep a collapsing plane off me. Wanda thought you needed back up, and they don’t get to imprison her, not after what she did to me.” Pietro can see just the side of Bucky Barnes’ face, the grim line of a rictus smile, the line that means he understands exactly what Pietro has claimed the right to of Wanda’s life.

The right of punishment. The right that exceeds whatever else anyone might want to do.

 

* * *

 

Wanda sits beside her brother and shuts her eyes. She doesn’t send her mind spinning out, but tucks it in. If she doesn’t look too hard at the mind beside her she can imagine things to be as they were, imagine there is trust between she and Pietro again, imagine that she never betrayed his trust and all they had ever built in a single fell swoop.

She can imagine that she is here, not because her brother has claimed the right to punish her for her sins, but because they are as they once were - linked by trust and love and blood and trauma, in a way that no one can take away from them.

Except someone did. _She_ did.

 

* * *

 

Siberia is cold. It is a cold even deeper than Sokovia’s winters but Wanda steps out into the snow and seems to half-embrace it, lets the cold cut her to her bones and the pain drive her power. Pietro wrings his fingers out, tucks them into his armpits, and looks to the Captain.

He signed the Accords. He wonders if Wanda knows this. The Captain does, and Sam. Clint probably knows, from Natasha. _An authority beyond yourselves_ is a laughable idea but a greater authority to claim responsibility? Someone to be held accountable after all? To decide _who_ should be held accountable, and ensure they pay? As Stark was not, for his bombs, as Wanda was not, for what she did to him?

Someone, finally, to ensure the guilty pay the price?

It is a seductive idea. He looks to Barnes, though, looks to the Captain.

The questions of course, that he missed in all his recklessness, in all his desire to see his sister pay: who decides who is guilty? And what happens if, in the end, they are wrong?

What happens to an innocent made to pay the price?

 

* * *

 

Something in the concrete halls here send something itching back into Pietro’s mind. He can sense his sister’s mind turning towards him, looking closer and wishes she wouldn’t, except that her own mind soon turns inwards as well.

Something in these halls is familiar and haunting and Pietro lets his blue limn him, calls glittering silver-blue magic to his hands and watches as Wanda does much the same.

Something here, they know, is wrong.

 

* * *

 

“It’s just me!” says Tony’s voice behind the suit’s faceplate. The helmet slides back to show his worried face.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Steve’s tone is blunt. At his side, Barnes’ weapon remains trained on Tony.

“Sam,” says Tony hands up, the glowing spots in the palms of his suit fading down. “I should have listened. He explained.”

“So, what?” says Pietro. “You are here to help?”

Tony shrugs, drops his hands. Somehow manages to look small despite wearing what amounts to several tonnes of armour and weapons. “Well,” he says. “There’s two Accords signees here. We might just be able to push this to legality if we solve it in time.”

The look Wanda shoots Pietro is not one of betrayal, but only because what she did to him was worse.

 

* * *

 

The base is…. It is eerie.

It’s almost empty as they travel through - tracks in dust, yes, but they overlap, go this way and that and it takes them most of an hour to find their way to the chamber, even with Barnes leading them. The only reason they are certain Zemo and the soldiers are still within its walls is the fact that none of Stark’s little traps have yet been tripped.

As they pace through Wanda and Pietro share a glance, magic bright around their hands, their power framing their bodies in light.

“Here,” Barnes says softly by half open doors. “It’s… . Here.”

Wanda reaches out a hand, flicks scarlet fingers and blasts the doors wide open.

 

* * *

 

His sister scares him. Still and now, she scares him, even as they worked in synchrony through the bunker, through the battle earlier, she scares him. They have their old synchrony still, yes, because they still understand each other on that fundamental level whether he likes it or not and as she paces out and up into the vast room she opened up for them, scarlet limning her body like bloodied hoarfrost on a rosebush he cannot help his fear.

He looks around the room, darts here and there in his silver-blue.

“Dead,” Pietro says. “All of them-”

“If it is any comfort,” says a voice crackling over loudspeaker. “They died in their sleep.”

“Zemo.” The Captain and Tony say the name at once, attention fixed.

“Yes,” says the voice, simply. Pietro can hear the Sokovian accent edging the words. When he looks to Wanda she nods - she hears it too.

“Why-” starts Barnes.

“Did you think I wanted more of you?”

 _Go,_ mouths Wanda. _Find him._

But… he cannot leave her here. Not alone.

For the first time in many years, he refuses to obey his sister.

 

* * *

 

Wanda can sense the Panther at the edge of the room. She doesn’t know how he got past Stark’s gadgets but she supposes it doesn’t matter. He’s seeing the truth of things now and, hopefully, _hopefully_ , that may stop him.

In the back of the room, something starts playing. Barnes and Stark and the Captain gather by it, watch closely, and Wanda glances to Pietro who shook his head and gathers glowing power in her fist.

 _If you do not-_ she mouths and he reaches for her hand.

“Together,” he whispers, barely audible. “Together, or-”

_Not at all._

And she pulls them through to where Zemo waits.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s scarlet puts Zemo to sleep, but the damage has already been done. By the time they return down in a portal of Pietro’s blue, everything is chaos.

 

* * *

 

 _He killed my mom_ is recurring through Stark’s mind and Wanda would knock him out but for the fact that in this fight they all are moving and she cannot target easily. The Panther is gone, cannot step in with all his vibranium and she wonders where he has left to - to find why Zemo is silent? Regardless. The battle is between a man trying to run, a man trying to protect him, and a man gone mad with grief and rage and the only two who might stop it…

Pietro does not trust her. Pietro signed the Accords.

 _Go,_ she whispers into Barnes’ mind, as brisk a whisper as she can manage and ducking out before his ruin of a mind crumbles more at her presence and she casts out a spell to try to hold back Stark.

 

* * *

 

Pietro, in all his speed, is still and shocked. Who does he chose? Those who are right, who would stop this fight and leave if they could or-

He owes Tony a debt. If not for Tony he would still miss and grieve his sister. If not for Tony he would be unknowing of what she had done. If not for Tony-

 _I wouldn’t be here,_ he realises.

 

* * *

 

Pietro ploughs into the middle of the battle, the opposite to her spell. While her scarlet restrains, trying desperately to pull Stark away, her brother and all his speed _push_ Tony back.

“Stop,” Pietro grits out. “Tony, _please,_ stop.”

And the reactor in Tony’s chest flares.

 

* * *

 

Pietro is thrown across the room, the blast of the repulsor in Tony’s chest clipping him even as he tries to dodge and Wanda runs and sprints, half-warps herself to her brother’s side, letting loose the scarlet chains she had tried to hold Stark back with, sending the man stumbling forwards and trying to regain his balance to go after the Captain and Barnes.

But Wanda does not care about that. She cares about the body underneath her hands, the skin and muscle torn back to show ribs and she summons all the scarlet magic she can to try to heal her brother.

 

* * *

 

He can feel her hands on his side but has not the strength to tremble or to flinch. He feels her magic in his body, and cannot recoil, cannot resist. Her hands trace a line around the void of binding agony on his ribs and as soon as he can breathe without pain he looks at her.

“Go,” he whispers. “Stop them.”

Wanda shakes her head, utterly mute, and takes his gloved hand in hers.

 _Together,_ he remembers, _Or not at all._

 

* * *

 

The battle continues as Wanda works magic over Pietro’s side. Knitting flesh together, sealing skin over a wound, these are different spells to the one to exchange one wound for another’s uninjured skin, but she will do this and she will do it well, because she will not see her brother die if she can save him.

When she is done Pietro lies beneath her hands, heart like a hummingbird’s and trembling in fear.

“There,” she says softly. “You will be alright.” If she could she would stroke his cheek, offer gentle reassurance except here, now, she is not reassuring to him.

Here, now, he trembles in fear.

 

* * *

 

Tony fights on. The Captain defends. Barnes climbs and tries to escape, tries to get out but Pietro has not the strength to stand, to rejoin battle and he is half-certain Wanda will not leave his side now, even if he asks it of her. He looks to her, willing to try even if-

Wanda’s eyes are glowing scarlet. “Forgive me,” she whispers, and casts scarlet out.

 

* * *

 

 _See,_ she says and peels into Stark’s mind, stripping off steel armour from it, peeling off the gold and titanium and hot-rod red paint to pour like a bloodied cascade into his head. _See what you are doing for what it is._

And into his mind she forces an image of Bucky’s ruined brain.

 

* * *

 

Wanda rises, her brother cradled in scarlet-strengthened arms. The Captain looks at her, to see her eyes glowing, Barnes almost flinches as he drops back down and Wanda sighs and looks at Tony, crumpled in a corner.

“Vengeance does no good,” she tells him. “And it will destroy those you care about as easily as those you hate.” She looks at her brother, trembling and half-unconscious in her arms, and looks back at Stark. “I learned that. Now it is your turn.”

 

* * *

 

They walk out of the base, walk out into the snow, and know not where to go.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Off Centre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13232892) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)




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